Wimbledon finals dovetail with my final days of weight loss

I decided to kill two birds with one stone over the weekend and watch the Wimbledon finals at the gym while doing some stationary cycling. The ladies final between the William's sisters turned out to be a pretty damp squib but at least it was good for burning around 500 calories.

When I went to watch the men's final between Roddick and Federer on Sunday, I figured Roddick would put up a good fight. However, while I was rooting for him I didn't expect Roddick to take more than a set against Swiss precision machine and I reckoned the whole thing would be over in about 800 calories. In the event, the whole affair turned out to be a lot closer than everyone expected and the final was a real crowd pleaser with Federer battling it out to the last to take the prize. The match went on for a record breaking 77 games, taking a full 4 hours and 16 minutes. Federer established himself as the world's best tennis player as the tennis gods watched on (Sampras, Borg, Laver), while Roddick fully proved his worth as an all-round tennis star of the highest calibre.

While Federer broke new records on the tennis courts, I broke a new personal record for my longest non-stop cardio session: I pretty much cycled for a full 4 hours, only really hopping off the bike to to sprint to my car and renew my parking ticket, which had a three hour expiry. At the end of it all, I had burned around 14,500 calories and I managed to close the day my first ever net negative calorie balance (i.e. after food intake) of -50.

When I weighed myself after this mammoth session I had lost almost a kilo and had hit my 8.5 stone target. However, almost all of this weight loss would have come from moisture evaporation and in order to make sure that I would hit my target the following morning I had to pull out calculator. I calculated the difference between my evening weight and morning weight over the past week. The minimum weight that I lost overnight was 0.6 kg. That meant I had 0.6kg to play with and I would still hit my target. 0.6kg of food sounds like a lot but after 4 hours of cycling it really isn't that much. I had a small slice of toast doused in olive oil (low weight, high calorie) and some dense sugary snacks. Dinner was a bit of mince and salad in a tortilla, and I had a couple of cups of tea. I went to bed weighing exactly 54.6 kg.

I stepped on the scales with some trepidation this morning but I need not have worried for my weight was 8.49 stone (53.9 kg), a shade below my target. Voila, that's it. 90 days after keeping a food diary, a calorie count, and recording my morning and evening weight, it's all over.